Category Archives: Featured

Getting Real About Race and Class: An Evaluation of the Constitutionality of Class-based, Socioeconomic Affirmative Action Without Grutter

Junis L Baldon – The concept of “racial neutrality” remains omnipresent in our political and judicial discourse about the use of race in college and university admissions.  Proponents of “race neutrality” have advocated for the use of class-based, socioeconomic affirmative action as a possible alternative to the explicit use of race in college and university admissions. Indeed, […]

The More Things Change, the More they Stay the Same: Why Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin Will Not Fundamentally Alter the Affirmative Action Landscape

Adam Lamparello – In Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (“Fisher II”), the United States Supreme Court will decide the constitutionality of the University of Texas’s (“University”) affirmative action policy, and the potential impact of the Court’s decision on affirmative action programs nationwide is being widely debated. Some commentators fear that the Court is […]

Lead Article: Pensions or Paintings? The Detroit Institute of Arts from Bankruptcy to Grand Bargain

by Maureen B. Collins This article examines the issues faced by the City of Detroit and the Detroit Institute of Arts when Detroit filed for municipal bankruptcy. Creditors called for the sale of the highly esteemed DIA art collection to pay outstanding municipal pension obligations. The DIA and the Michigan Attorney General viewed the collection […]

Ashton, Bekins, and Necessity: Why Chapter 9 is Constitutional, But Not the Only Way for Municipalities to Adjust Their Debts

by Aaron Michael Dmiszewicki The 1930s saw the nation in crisis, steeped in the worst of the Great Depression. In 1936, over 2,000 municipalities, counties, and other governmental units, in 41 of the 48 states, were known to be in default. In response to this crisis, Congress amended the Bankruptcy Act in 1934 and passed the […]